


Nothing's Ever Easy

by Kariachi



Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Addiction, I don't think I've posted any Levinstar here, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's always happy endings as soon as you find your soulmate in these things, M/M, OV-compliant, POV Alternating, Sorry kids but you gotta earn that shit, Suicidal Thoughts, Time to change that, Time to change that too, Trans Kevin, Trans Male Character, the story of a romance 20 fucking years in the making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 01:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16924143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kariachi/pseuds/Kariachi
Summary: Step One: Learn Soulmate's NameStep Two: Find SoulmateStep Three: Tell Them To Go Fuck Themselves





	Nothing's Ever Easy

Mike is five years old when the mark on his chest finally turns into an actual legible signature. ‘Eden Grace Levin’, it says, and he pictures sundresses, tanned skin, blue eyes, and sunlight. For the rest of the week he’s dedicated to showing it off, and after that to figure out this writing thing so she knows he’s there too.

~

Eden’s six when her soulmate gets his act together and figures out how to get his signature so it’s definitely ‘Michael’ and not ‘maybe Michael or maybe Miguel’. After that, she’s suddenly seeing constant improvements on it, spending hours staring at her arm with a stupid smile while the writing gets better and better.

~

Seven years old and ‘Eden’ is now ‘Eddie’, not that it matters much to him. With his father so busy, decent nannies for mutant kids hard to come by, Cooper an uncommon guest, and the less said about his mother the better, her signature is still the most constant companion he has. She can call herself Banana-rama-fo-fama and he wouldn’t care one lick.

~

‘Michael Jeremy Morningstar’. She spends a lot of time sitting outside, avoiding her family, and imagining the boy attached to that name. Someone handsome and classy and smart, who definitely wouldn’t stand by and let her get detention for throwing stuff _back_ at the kids at school.

~

He’s ten when ‘Eddie Grace’ becomes ‘Kevin Ethan’, and he started avoiding soulmate discussions after the second time he gets detention for biting one of the jerks at school.

~

Everything goes to shit when Kevin’s ten, it was heading there anyway, and before he knows it it’s just him, an abandoned subway station, and a name. Everything is going to get worse…

~

Thirteen years old and Mike is just so _hungry_. He always has been but now, with puberty in full swing, it’s a constant ache, and nobody is any help. Just constant judgement of what he’s eating, how much he’s eating, no matter what happens to his health when he doesn’t. But, he’s figured out how to put those extra mouths to use, figured out feeding, and nobody can even tell! No judgement, no complaining, no hunger, and it comes with free power…

~

Thirteen years old and Kevin is just fucking tired. He’s killed, he’s watched people die, he’s been used and abused and while now he has Argit he just wants it to _stop_. It’s tempting, some days more than others, to make it. But then he thinks of Argit, and of that signature that just keeps getting more ornate every day, and pulls himself back up.

~

His father dies a week before his fifteenth birthday and between that, his mother practically remarrying at the funeral, and being cast aside in favor of his new, ‘normal’ stepsiblings, it is the worst month of his life. Still, he has his father’s tech, and nobody around to question when classmates come over…

~

Michael’s handwriting stops improving.

~

He’s got a pretty good set up going, if he does say so himself. There’s not even any need to go hunting anymore, not now that the girls are accelerating their own recovery from his feedings by engaging in their own, and then they come right to his door! It’s wonderful and he should be content, but more and more it feels like it’s not enough, especially not with Gwen wandering the halls at school like a particularly evasive pot roast. So he looks her up, and he makes a plan.

The name ‘Kevin’ is so common, he doesn’t even _think_ about the signature on his chest, not until the night is done and he’s dragged himself home, thrown himself into more research, including some about this rival navivore. For a heartbeat there’s something resembling regret, before it’s superseded by outrage at the _audacity_ of him, how _dare_ he think he can get between Mike and the power he so craves.

There’s no guilt over his next plan.

~

Kevin knows it’s him the moment he introduces himself. He probably shouldn’t, there’s got to be a million Mike Morningstar’s out there, he just does, and he almost says something, almost reaches for this person he’s wanted to find so badly, but something doesn’t feel right. Once he starts flirting with Gwen alarm bells jolt to life in his head. He survived the Null Void, he’s eaten people before, he’s _hunted_ people before, he knows exactly what’s going on. But, how do you explain that without incriminating yourself?

In the end, he’s not surprised by what Mike does that night, or by his revenge plot. Really, given his life so far, he’s more upset he didn’t see it coming.

~

Prison’s not supposed to be fun, he knows, but under Morgg it’s an absolute nightmare. He’s starving, he’s weak, and along with everyone else he’s worked to the bone under hellish conditions. It’s bad enough that when he’s dragged to the transport room and sent through he doesn’t even see the forcefield, he doesn’t even see Cooper- once his bestfriend and now just looking so put off by him and his behavior- all he sees is _somewhere else_.

Just for that, he’d have probably agreed to help save the world.

~

There’s not a bit of Kevin that likes working with Mike. He’s an asshole, and an addict, and everything he does feels like a personal betrayal. But he has to admit, it’s nice, just that once, to be fighting alongside him. His attitude in the face of probably death is admirable.

He _almost_ feels bad when he vanishes immediately after the war is won.

~

It takes about four seconds, during what would later be termed the Dominus Librum Incident, for Mike to realize that punching Kevin was probably not a good idea. Without his powers he can’t fly, and it’s too far to the mainland anyway, and Kevin is the only one who knows how to pilot his ship. Thankfully the other teen doesn’t take it seriously. While Mike’s brain is still screaming for power neither has gotten any real physical affection in too long, and this is the first time either has felt close to normal, so they extend their truce even more for the sake of taking a few minutes to hold each other.

Agonizing torture could not get him to admit how much he liked it.

~

Kevin isn’t surprised that Mike finds a way to keep being a shit even after losing his powers. He’s not even sure he really blames him, at that point. He’s been there, he knows how it is, but that doesn’t excuse anything, doesn’t make it better, and damnit he needs to be stopped.

So he stops him, no matter the cost.

~

He gets to see Cooper again during the Kevin rescue attempt. It’s been too long, neither is comfortable, so they end up making small talk until Cooper brings up that stupid signature. Mike refuses to discuss it, and keeps everything focused on work after that.

He has more power than he’d dreamed for about ten seconds, and then all he has is a black eye.

~

He hates himself for everything he did while he was out of it, every little bit. But between hurting Morgg and returning that black eye to Mike the experience was almost worth it.

~

When he steals the spellbook from Kevin, there are certain things Mike expects. A fight. A possible loss. That angry look on his face that totally isn’t cute. What he doesn’t expect is getting knocked out. Or waking up in a strange place, practically made of power, with a strange, grown woman hanging around eyeing him up. He does not have a good history with grown adults who eye him up. But there’s so much power, especially rolling off her, so he makes the most of it, plays the part, until he has an opening to leave.

He can’t leave.

Things get worse.

~

Kevin can’t bring himself to feel bad for Charmcaster. He knows it makes him a bad person, and that as soon as Gwen finds out it’ll be another dressing down about how much of a hypocrite he is for not forgiving people when people are so forgiving with him, but he can’t. So the woman who had taken advantage of him and seized control of his mind was herself taken advantage of by a guy she slept with. Boo-hoo. Karma’s a bitch.

Asshole or no, he finds his spiteful ass letting Mike escape, and seriously considering tattooing ‘Karma’ over his signature.

~

The cult- great idea fueled by his thirst for power.

Going back to Legerdomain- bad idea fueled by his thirst for power.

Using Gwen to do so- holy shit Morningstar you are going to regret this

Existing on the same plane of existence as Charmcaster after their little ‘relationship’- he clearly just wants to die.

By the time the Tennyson team gets them all out Mike is about ready to just go back to the alleys and rot away in peace.

~

Words cannot describe Kevin’s level of done. The cult thing, the kidnapping Gwen thing, is just- He’s done, sick and tired of Mike’s bullshit. But he’s good, lets the authorities handle him, doesn’t knock every single excess tooth of his in.

Then he finds out Charmcaster has kidnapped him and somehow he manages to become _angrier_.

Still, once they’ve gotten him free, he doesn’t cover his ass this time.

~

Mike isn’t sure if the fact this prison sentence is less nightmarish than the last is thanks to Kevin exposing Morgg’s bullshit or Cooper pulling strings with the Plumbers, but he certainly isn’t going to complain.

Being forced to quit cold turkey is a bitch and a half all on its own, thank you.

~

He tries very hard not to notice, but while he’s on the road trip with the Tennysons and Rook, Mike’s handwriting starts improving again.

~

Three years in prison, which he knows perfectly well is a damn sight less than his sentence, and there’s a break in the grey, boring clouds in the shape of Cooper, coming with forgiveness in his heart and an offer of parole in exchange for helping him and Kevin put together a charity for mutant kids.

Mike does not want to work with Kevin, for about a million reasons the least of which is that he’s a moron that he never cared about anyway so there.

Mike _does_ want to be friends with Cooper again.

And mutant kids could really use decent aid.

And also he’s run out of good books.

~

It starts small, but with three of them working together, playing to their strengths, the charity does great.

~

He’s not allowed to leave the county, but that’s fine. He gets access to his accounts (his mother, it turns out, wiped one trust fund clean within a year of his father’s death, but he’s got two more that add up to enough that Cooper choked on his own spit when he heard the number) and bacheloring it up with Cooper pretty much forces him to live beneath his means. After all, only one of them knows how to shop for groceries, and that’s the one that can live off ramen and pizza. As long as everything he needs access to remains available through the internet or in Bellwood, he wants for little.

Except maybe some more-than-friendly company, _Levin_.

~

Kevin has three main jobs when it comes to Mike.

  1. Make sure he stays clean, because Cooper tries, but he has no idea what he’s doing or what it’s like.
  2. Bring food by he and Cooper’s apartment so that they’ll eat like civilized human beings (“For fuck’s sake you two _eat a vegetable_!”)
  3. Make sure he doesn’t get laid, because he is nothing if not spiteful and begrudging and Mike betrayed him by being an asshole



Beyond that, they try to avoid each other.

~

He doesn’t fix things with Gwen- he doesn’t even try with the rest of his victims- but eventually they reach a point where they can work together without trouble, and even hang out in the same room without a disaster.

He also doesn’t fix things with Charmcaster, even though she spends so much time with Gwen, but that’s fine because really neither of them came out of that fiasco anywhere near clean and anyway Kevin has his back on that one.

~

He doesn’t want to hang out with Mike, wants to avoid him as much as he can given the circumstances, but unfortunately he lives with Cooper, who is Kevin’s friend. And even if they weren’t friends, Cooper is dating Alan, who’s essentially his little brother. Which means it’s not long before group hang-outs are happening in the Daniels-Morningstar apartment.

It’s not as much an ongoing series of disasters as he expected.

~

“You like Digimon?”

“Yeah, you too?”

“…Cooper can never hear about this, we’ll be marathoning it until we’re grey.”

“Again?”

“Shut up, Levin.”

~

“Ooo, Pern!”

“Oh my god, he’s read a book.”

“Shut up, dragons are gay culture and you know it.”

~

The charity just keeps getting bigger, and it feels surprisingly good to be making a difference for people like him.

~

As time goes by, Mike stops being such an asshole. Still a little shit, but after so long hanging out with Argit Kevin’s used to it.

~

“You know, you are nothing like what I thought you’d be when I first read your signature.”

“Really? Outside the asshole addict thing I was surprisingly spot-on.”

“You would be, jackass.”

~

“There, one each breakfast sandwich. Double everything except the bagel.”

“Marry me?”

“Just eat your food, Sparkles.”

~

At twenty-five, on New Years Eve, Mike edges around the crowd watching this year’s Cardcaptor Sakura marathon (because Cooper and Gwen like it and Argit and Ben like to heckle, so between them, Alan, Ken, and Kevin everyone else was outvoted) to settle in beside Kevin, place a platter of nachos on their legs, and warn him that he has every intention of kissing him at midnight. Kevin laughs at him.

“You can _try_.”

~

New Year’s Eve, just after he turns twenty-six, Kevin lets Mike kiss him at midnight.

~

“I’m just saying, you and I could upgrade, get a better property. It’s not like we don’t have the money.”

“I like the property Argit and I have. Besides, that money could go to the kids. Do you really want them to do without just so you can have too many bedrooms and a pool?”

“…that is a low fucking blow, Daffodil…”

~

“So, kids, yea or nae?”

“I’m gonna say yea, just because I haven’t knocked anyone up, and you haven’t gotten knocked up, and between us I think we’re due.”

“So, is that a vote for ‘we should try’ or for ‘it’s gonna happen eventually, may as well buy a crib now’?”

“It’s a vote for ‘we can’t possibly fuck up worse than our parents so, sure, someday, let’s give it a shot’.”

“Damn, talk about setting the bar low. My parents alone you could use the damn thing for limbo.”

~

Mike is twenty-eight years old when, on a whim, he signs a Thanks for the Donation letter heading for Ben with ‘Michael ‘I Love My Husband’ Morningstar-Levin’.

The snorting laugh from the next room is like sunlight.


End file.
